The decision brings an end to six years of litigation and appeals that Perry said wore on him and his wife, who died in 1999.

``So we are finally done. There are no more bites of the apple for her,'' Perry said.

Williams' lawyer, John R. Williams, acknowledged: ``A lot of lawyers burned up a lot of trees over this litigation, all to no avail.''

The May 10 decision favoring the town was based on another judge's ruling in January on a nearly identical lawsuit against Perry. That ruling concluded that Susan Williams couldn't prove her firing was retaliation for a discrimination suit she filed against Perry and the town in 1995.

Williams, who was fired for cowardice in July 1996 after pulling out of a police chase in May of that year, sued the town in August 1998. Nearly a year later she filed a similar suit, this time naming Perry as the defendant.

In both suits, Williams contended that her firing was unconstitutional and that she was punished more harshly than other officers would have been because of the earlier discrimination suit, which Williams lost when a federal jury decided her case had no merit.

Williams was the senior officer on the scene on May 15, 1996, when she failed to accompany fellow officers onto I-84 in pursuit of a robbery suspect. Williams told her supervisors she wasn't convinced they were pursuing the right car but, according to court records, she later conceded that her actions put her colleagues in danger and showed poor judgment. She was fired in July 1996 after eight years on the force, and in 1997, the state Board of Mediation and Arbitration upheld the Southington Police Commission's decision to fire her.

Judge Warren Eginton of U.S. District Court in Bridgeport initially dismissed Williams' 1998 lawsuit against the town, saying the town alone couldn't be sued. An appeals court later reversed that decision, remanding the case to Eginton.

To cover her bases, Williams filed the 1999 lawsuit against Perry. Judge Ellen Bree Burns of the U.S. District Court in New Haven dismissed that suit in February 2000, calling it repetitious. But in October 2000, the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision.

In January, Burns ruled against Williams in the suit against Perry, saying the town had sufficient basis for firing Williams, even without considering her 1995 lawsuit. In May, Williams' lawyer, John R. Williams of New Haven, conceded in a court memorandum that the remaining lawsuit, the one that named the town as a defendant, fell under the same ruling. The suit was subsequently dismissed in court.

``I was astounded,'' said the town's lawyer, James Tallberg of the Hartford firm Updike, Kelly & Spellacy. ``They essentially threw in the towel.''

Williams plans no further appeals and left the state a few months ago, her lawyer said.

``It has walked off into the sunset,'' said John R. Williams, who is not related to Susan. ``She has started a new life in another part of the country.''